The present disclosure relates generally to telecommunications and wireless expense management. In particular, methods and systems for resource planning and utilization management of telecommunications devices within enterprise are described herein.
Telecommunication devices within an enterprise are a complex field for users, financial managers, procure gent officers, and other corporate users. Billing, reporting, provisioning, and procurement follows arcane methods developed by the telecommunication service providers to maximize profits for their services.
Numerous techniques have been developed for optimizing billing, particular in the wireless telecommunication space, based on the best available service plans and the past history of telecommunication device usage. Use of past history to predict wireless use and to choose a wireless plan accordingly is presented in U.S. Pat. No. 7,486,944 by Carpenter et al. Use of history and usage pattern to select the most cost effective wireless plan for each user is presented in U.S. Pat. No. 5,027,388 by Bradshaw et al. The complete disclosures of the above patents and patent applications are herein incorporated by reference for gall purposes.
These solutions provide a per-device approach that ultimately relies on the telecommunication service provider(s) billing a plan back to each device. These do not account for the increasing flexibility and availability of pooling resources and aggregate purchasing of telecommunication services. There is no solution currently in use for providing allocation of telecommunications devices within an enterprise from multiple service providers allowing for aggregate purchase of telecommunication services and usage based chargeback of services to individual users within the enterprise.
Disclosure addressing one or more of the existing needs in the industry is provided in the detailed description below. The methods and systems described below relate generally to resource management and more specifically they relates to methods and systems for resource planning and utilization management of telecommunications devices within an enterprise to optimize the delivery of telecommunications services to maximize matching services with usage while minimizing cost.